Thread by @Liath74

Waited to post this as I needed to calm down first. I popped into a local pub on Friday evening as I didn’t feel like cooking so thought I’d grab dinner on my way home. It was fairly busy but I found a table and ordered food and a drink.

Whilst I was sat on my own reading on my phone a group of men came back into the pub from outside. I guess they’d been smoking in the beer garden. I didn’t see them come past but they were being pretty loud. Turns out they were on the table behind me.

This was their conversation, as close to verbatim as I can remember.
“They put too much crap on there. Why do I care if you have A Levels? I wanna know if you know how to suck dick. If you ain’t gonna swallow I ain’t interested.”

“Exactly. I just wanna know if you fuck or not.” “We should find one who will. No messing about, they will all fuck for money” “Yeah. But it needs to be cheap. Like find the cheapest one, like a tenner or something”

“Yeah and when she’s there and you’ve fucked her once tell her you ain’t paying for it cos she’s a slut.” They we’re all laughing at this point. “Yeah and we should film her. When she’s shouting ‘No, I don’t want to.’ Fuck her again.” “Yeah. We should all have a go”

This was really loud. In a pretty busy pub at 6:30 on a Friday night. They obviously didn’t care who heard them talking about gang raping a woman they picked up on a dating app and filming themselves doing it. Is this where we’ve got to now? That this is normalised behaviour?

I was sat on my own, feeling angry and at the same time knowing I was in no position to challenge them. Instead I went to the bar. Told the staff I was moving tables and told them what just happened and asked if they really wanted men like that in their pub.

The group of men left. I don’t know if the bar staff asked them to leave. I think they did but I’m not sure. Two of the bar staff were young women so I guess they wouldn’t have felt safe confronting them either. This is really depressing.

1. All the men in that group actively joined in with this fantasy rape scenario. Not one challenged it.
2. They are comfortable enough to be discussing this at high volume in a crowded pub.
3. They were egging each other on. It quickly escalated from pick up to gang rape on film.

I know if I get any response it’ll be something along the lines of #NotAllMen but if none of you call this shit out then this is where we get to. That it’s perfectly socially acceptable to discuss how you’d go about gang raping a woman as part of a conversation in a pub.

Just thinking back over what happened and typing it out makes me feel physically sick. I am utterly powerless to change this behaviour. To challenge these men is to put myself at risk of physical harm.
So to all the men who read this - #StandUp #StopSocialisedSexism

I know probably hardly anyone will see this and fewer people will care even if they do. I am not exactly active on Twitter. I don’t have many followers. It’s easy to shrug and think “But what can I do”. But that isn’t good enough. It’s a male problem and men need to fix it.